The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table - Inside the Mind of the Israeli Religious Right with Rabbi Yishai Fleisher

Episode Date: June 12, 2025

Rabbi Yishai Fleisher is the International Spokesperson for the Jewish Community of Hebron - a Middle East hotspot, King David's first capital, and home of the Mearat Hamachpela - the Tomb of the Biblical Patriarchs and Matriarchs. He is also an elected Councilman in one of the largest Jewish community in Judea - Efrat - and an advisor for international affairs to Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir. Rabbi Yishai is a popular English-language podcaster and YouTuber on the topics of Israel, Judaism, and the Middle East and has appeared in major media outlets including CNN, Piers Morgan, and more. Yishai is a rabbi, a graduate of Cardozo Law School in NYC, a former paratrooper, and continues to serve in the IDF reserves.

This is Live from the Table, the official podcast of the world-famous Comedy Cellar, available wherever you get your podcasts, available on YouTube, which is the best way to see it because then you've got the video as well as the audio, and also available on demand on Sirius Satellite Radio. Dan Natterman here. I work at the Comedy Cellar from time to time. Noam Dorman is here. He's the owner of the Comedy Cellarar the ever-expanding comedy cellar

with locations in new york city and las vegas nevada perry alashan brand our producer is with us as always and today we have all the way from uh from uh efrat israel rabbi yeshai fleischer are you a rabbi yeah okay rabbi yeshai fleischer international spokesperson for the jewish community of Hebron, which is the home of the biblical tomb of the patriarchs and matriarchs and a Middle East hotspot, to say the least. Welcome, Yishai. Howdy.

Good to have you with us. Thank you very much for having me. And before we get into the issues, I just want to tell you that I went to school nearby here at Cordozo Law School. And I haven't been down to Washington Square Park in a long time, many years. And I saw where, you know, where we're here with the location. So I took got here early, walked around Washington Square Park. That's where me and my wife kind of got together. And she used to play guitar down here. And so it's, it's fun to be down here. And it's fun to be with you guys. So thanks a lot. All right. Well, welcome, Rabbi. So we talk a lot. I don't know if you've listened to our podcast at

all. I checked it out. We talk a lot about Israel. And one of the things I always find myself doing is throwing the right-wing Israelis kind of under the bus. I'm sure you're used to that. And it depends where, you know, where I live, there's a lot of right-wing Israelis. So in my communities, we feel strong. We've got schools, political parties. I mean, I'm sure you're used to people like me, you know, kind of more secular Jews, like throwing you guys under the bus, rhetorically anyway. And we have half a minion here almost together with us here. You know, I don't really know that well what it is that you guys stand for and what you guys think. And I have a friend actually was a lifelong friend who became a settler. And I don't know if you probably don't like that word, I imagine.

I do like that word. I think the word settler is OK. I prefer the word resettler because we are resettling the land. But I've come to use the term settler kind of like when I was a kid, the word gay was a negative word, like a slur, and then it became a positive word. So I'm using settler in a positive word. I'm like, we're the folks that are holding on to the land of Israel. We're doing that for you.

That's right. We're pushing back on jihadis, holding on to the land. So let me get to this. I have a friend who became a settler, and he's reasonable when i speak to him you know but i haven't really explored his his views so um i i thought that since i don't really know what it is you guys stand for it would be uh fair and nice to actually have somebody on to represent these views? Because I assume in some ways we get a cartoon impression of what it is you believe and what your movement stands for. In other ways, I think we're probably going to have profound disagreements.

But in essence, can you in a nutshell give us what distinguishes your views from like a typical... Say left-wing Tel Avivian? Or just a moderate, or even a Likud member who doesn't want to annex the territories and things like that. What is your position there? Okay, I mean, I think we have to take a few steps back before we get into exactly... But not 3,000 years. Not 3,000 years. If you want, go ahead.

I mean, we don't have to go 000 years not 3 000 years if you want go ahead i mean we don't have to go through the whole 3 000 years but uh first and foremost i'm a zionist i come from secular russian jews um they became observant later on down the line but when i was raised in haifa when i was a kid we were secular family but we were strongly Zionistic. And we believe that we have to defend our rights as a Russian Jew. There's a kind of, forget religion for a second, just as a Russian Jew, there's like a toughness built in. That's like part of the belief system that we are a people hood that is oftentimes persecuted and we've got to push back and we've got to identify ourselves as an ethnic group

that has ethnic rights and uh so that's first and foremost where i come from my parents my my my grandparents great-grandparents were on tanks that liberated auschwitz my my grandparents uh fought against uh communism and and and my my parents were literally refuseniks and pushed back against the Iron Curtain, were able to break out and came in the early 70s to the U.S. and then to Israel. And they were Zionists. I am a Zionist.

I was born on the- You define Zionist as believing Israel has a right to a Jewish homeland in Israel. Yes, but I would also add to that the Zionist is also building that land, like being involved in the project. I distinguish between what you said. I call that pro-Israel. So I'm not a Zionist. I don't know what you are. You didn't tell me. I'm not a Zionist by your definition, unless I go to Israel.

I didn't say go to Israel. I said be involved actively in the building project of the Jewish. So writing a check would be, would be. Writing a check is, is, is definitely a part of it. You know, buying property there, going there every summer, that type of thing, sending your kids. Okay. So let's not get sidetracked by that. So, so, but you. Zionism is a big project.

Okay. But you, but you stand for, you would like to annex the West Bank. Hold on. Hold on. Okay, go. Well, I just want to try to. I'm trying to get annex the West Bank. Hold on, hold on. Okay, go ahead. Well, I just want to try to get to the fun part. Go ahead. I don't know. You know, I think your audience is very broad out there.

I don't think they all understand this thing. Okay. My parents broke out of the Soviet Union to come to the land of Israel. Okay, but that's a personal story. No, it's not a personal story. It's a story of a million Jews that broke out of the Soviet Union and came to the land of Israel. It's not a personal story because we've been waiting for 3,000 years to rebuild our Jewish state. This is not me. I'm part of a big movement. And right now I'm part of- I'm trying to defend

the movement. That's right. And I'm part of also a movement on top of that, which is the movement to hold on to our ancestral land. Now, what happened? If you don't go, see, the thing is, Noam, if you want to rush, if you want to rush through, then we'll just leave the audience not understanding what's going on we'll leave in the same situation they were beforehand then maybe the situation you were in but you don't understand really what what the factors are or we could take a second understand what are the issues involved and get a little you know a little my grandparents came from russia as well but go ahead go ahead good okay what's wrong with that so i'm saying it's not a personal story. No. Thanks for proving my point. That is not part of my political argumentation about the... It should be.

Okay. In any case, I think it very much should be. In any case, probably it is, by the way, because you wouldn't care so much about Israel and do these shows over and over again. I'm just trying to identify objective concepts, objective logic, objective arguments that would be written in a platform, as it were, of what it is that you believe. Heritage and where we come from isn't part of how we form those platforms?

Fine, but make that connection, yes. I shall. Okay. And so 1948, does Israel win the 1948 War of Independence? Yes, it does. But it loses to Jordan a huge track of the lands that are considered the heartland of the Jewish people. They are the cities that people always prayed for to return. Nobody prayed for Tel Aviv, what they prayed for.

They didn't lose it to Jordan. That was not part of the partition, UN partition. Correct. The UN partition was not a legally binding doctrine. It was done by the general body. It was also not recognized by international law. Nothing happened there. The Israelis agreed.

The Arabs never did. It was nowhere. It didn't happen. The UN thing did not happen. Jordan pushed in and fought us and divided our Jerusalem, took away our Hebron, where we lived for thousands of years, took away Bethel, took away Shiloh, took away Shechem. Okay, what's called Nablus.

Under the partition plan, Jerusalem was supposed to stay with Israel? Jews were supposed, the partition plan, which by the way, it's a fallacy. It never materialized. It was a plan of the UN. It was a fallacy, but when Israel accepted it, then it becomes, it doesn't matter that it's a fallacy. No, if you have a one-sided contract, if one side accepts a contract, the other one doesn't, nothing happened there, right? There's no contractual obligation.

There was not a contract. We did not – at the end of the day, it didn't happen. That thing did not happen. And we did not partition – and by the way, Jordan is not the so-called Palestine that it was supposed to be partitioned to. They were not going to get that piece of land. I'm not even arguing. Jordan pushes it. I'm just trying to establish a factual basis.

Yes, I'm trying to establish a factual basis. Was Jerusalem part of what was supposed to become the Arabic state or was Jerusalem supposed to be? Jerusalem was supposed to be the capital of Israel and we were supposed to have access to the holy places. Access. According to that UN partition plan, which never came to fruition. Okay. I'm sorry that some people who didn't study law don't understand the difference. I did study law.

I went to University of Pennsylvania Law School. Well, so then do you not know the difference between a contract and not a contract? We had, this was not. I do. It was a UN. The UN resolution. Not a contract. Of not the Security Council.

Just a general resolution. People believe. I believe in this idea. didn't happen it never happened jordan a different country pushed in attack they were british armed british led british trained and they attacked israel they they killed our people they killed our communities in gush etzion where i live today yeah they destroyed the many thousand year old community of hebron. They cut away our Jerusalem. They took away our Western wall and our temple Mount. And we, 1948, we lost a huge chunk of our land to Jordan,

which was not supposed to be the owner of that land. That's it. Not supposed to be by God's standards or the UN standards. Even by UN standards. It wasn't Jordan that was supposed to receive it. Jordan, it was supposed to be some kind of, you know, another Palestinian state.

And don't forget, by the way, that originally under the mandate for Palestine that was, that was given to the, by the League of Nations to the British, that was supposed to be Jewish land. Then they cut away part of the Jewish land, made it Jordan, which was the first Palestinian state. Then they pushed in to, to our ancestral homeland, the heartland of Israel, and took that away, destroyed our Jewish community. It should be known more that Jordan was actually part of the original Palestine mandate. That's right. And today, by the way, Jordan is 75% Palestinian. There's your Jewish – there's a Jewish piece of land given to the Palestinians.

You already have a Palestinian state. You already have one. It's called Jordan. Any case, in 1948, we lost all that land. We lost the heartland of the land of Israel, what people prayed for and thought about. That was the historic heartland of the Jewish people. Okay, Jerusalem, and it's in France, it's a highland, it's in the central mountain region of the country. That's where the Bible took place.

That's where all of Jewish history took place. And now at the end of the day, what are we basing Israel on? History, right? Our whole rights we claim to this land based on our history. So if the most historical element of it is taken away, well, that undermines our historical connection to the land. In any case, 1967 rolled around. In 1967, Israel liberated, not occupied, but liberated that heartland from the Jordanians. 19 years of an illegal occupation. Look it up. It was illegal. It was not recognized by any country except for England, actually. And we pushed the Jordanians back. Now, then there

was a split inside of Israel. Part of the Israeli public wanted to annex and hold on to these lands and make it part of Israel, like we did in Jerusalem. What we did in Jerusalem was, which was liberated in 1967, we annexed it, made it part of the body politic of Israel. It became Israel. But we didn't do that in the rest of those territories and instead left it in a quasi status. And they thought maybe they can give it away for peace, all kinds of other ideas. But what happened was, is there was a group of people that I represent today called settlers. And these are people who are like, no, no, no, no. This is the heart of our story. This is where we're from. We have to resettle this land. And we started pushing into these places. Now the state was ambivalent. It helped us on the one hand. It's

tried to block us on the other hand. Today, there's a half a million Israelis living in the so-called West Bank, what we call Judea Samaria. It's not occupation, it's liberation in our mind. And we are now very successful politically. We have many more parties that represent us, our schools, my kids study in state schools that represent our opinion. And you asked about Likudnikim. The majority of Likudnikim believe that we should annex Judea and Samaria. The majority of Israel's nationalist-leaning country, our voters, lean to the right. They believe that Jews have a right in Judea and Samaria, and we are on the march towards annexation and normalization of these lands. Now, it's very important to understand that we have a tiny, Israel's a tiny piece of land. It's New Jersey-sized compared to a humongous, humongous Arab world. An easy way to

understand it is like Taiwan. I have a lot of Taiwanese visitors coming to Hebron. I tell them, what's wrong with you, Taiwan? You're a little island next to China. Why don't you just make peace? And they're always at war. There was a conflict. Why don't you just make peace with China by cutting half of your little island, give it to China and there'll be peace. And at first they look at me blank stare like you're doing Dan. And then they start to laugh seeing how absurd and ridiculous it is. The idea to cut Taiwan in half and give it away to China. So to, to cut Israel in half and give it away to the jihadist, uh, uh, um, motivated countries around us would be absurd and silly and it's not happening and it hasn't

happened every time we've tried it it has failed okay so you know there's so much you're blurring a lot of terms going in and out of legal terms to historical arguments and it's all quite ingenious but but it's it's opaque and i and i don't know really how to get through it. You're practiced at this. Well, I represent our people. Yeah. So let's just take it step by step. So the UN partition plan was –

Jerusalem was supposed to be a kind of independent international city, something like that. Is that right? Yeah, yeah. There was a few different versions of it. Yeah. There was a few different versions of it. Yeah. There was a few different versions of it. But the point is, any international legal scholar will tell you

that the UN resolution is void. Hold on. And Jordan took that over. So I can understand the argument that you liberated Jerusalem in some way because the intent was supposed to be a city where Arabs and Jews both have the right to pray. And that wasn't the case. You do know that previous to the UN, there was this thing called League of Nations, and

it had a completely different outlook. But that really is void. That's void. Yeah. But the UN's not void. Okay. No, because the League of Nations, in fact, Article 80 of the UN Charter says that the League of Nations decisions are not void but are accepted.

And what was the decision of the League of Nations? The decision was is that England was given the right to help create a mandatory of four states. It was supposed to assist four states to be born. But the League of Nations state and land of Israel. The 1917 Balfour Declaration, 1920 San Remo Accords, 1923 League of Nations mandate for Palestine. All these documents and there are others all pointed to the idea of creating a Jewish state the land of Israel, including Judea and Samaria. Duh. It's the heartland of the Jewish people. But it's superseded by the UN.

It was not superseded. They made a decision that was illegal, but it was just a recommendation in any case. All right. Let's, let's, in any case, I'm not a UN guy. Your interpretation of the legal arguments here may not be wrong, but it's not the majority interpretation of international law. The UN is a defunct organization. This country would do well to stop paying money into it. So let's talk about the practical arguments. You want to annex that territory.

Have you ever toured Hebron? One second. Have you ever been there? Have you ever been there? Have you ever been there? Honestly, have you ever been to these territories? I've been to the West Bank. Was I in Hebron? I don't remember.

Where did you visit the West Bank? I drove with some Israelis, and I was with my friend, Dariit's son, and we're driving. We're eating at a restaurant there, and all of a sudden, he calls his father. Yeah, Dad, we're in the West Bank or whatever city we were in and his father's screaming are you crazy get the hell out of there he's wearing a a child t-shirt anyway um and when i was younger but uh before things were so tense you know that where i live it's it's a big anglo area hold on

you know you know what it is i the reason i'm cutting you off is because I a little bit don't want to turn the whole discussion into some kind of legalism. This is a very Jew-y thing to do. Like as though everything is about some kind of legal institution. I said, I want to ask about the practical questions. Practical questions are. Practical is a life. If you want to annex the West Bank, Judea and Samaria. Appreciate it.

What is to become of the Palestinian people? Okay. And by the way, do you recognize that they have some rights to that land at all or no rights? Good question. I'll answer that. I think that they have, anybody living in our land should have civil rights guaranteed by the state of Israel. Civil rights, but not necessarily national rights, i.e. you have the right to your property, you have the right to... No, let me stop you there, because you went to law school, I went to law school.

And there is an analogy here to the law. When Arabs are living there for hundreds of years, I don't know how long. Without a state. No, in that land. But not in a state. Not in a state, but in that land. Right, under Turkish dominion and other dominions. You would somehow have them have believed that this can never be your land because

there's a people out there, the Jews, who have a forever claim to this land. And it's true right now, they're all over dispersed and nobody even imagines that this could ever happen. But just so you know, even a thousand years from now, if the Jews want to come back, this is still the Jews' land because God gave it to them. Is that, I don't even mean to be flippant. Is that the argument? First thing, it's not just God, although God is there and I don't deny it. I'm happy to talk about God if you'd like. I'll put on my rabbi hat. But in the meantime, we also have a recognition of international law of Jewish indigeneity in the land. And the Arabs, the majority of them, were economic migrants to the place. And I told you right from the get-go, I don't deny that they

may have rights to their houses and rights to their private land, but they don't have a right to a state. They never had a state there. Before them was a Turkish state, and before that was a crusader state, and before that was a Muslim state. But it's their land as much as any Jews' land. In terms of private property, not in terms of a state. In terms of property and morality. Well, look, we Americans, we live in, a lot of us live in land that belonged to the Native Americans. And it's much more recent and it's much more unjust, but we do believe their claim has been extinguished. They're not going to come back and say, you know, this is still our land.

So you are in favor of Jews moving back and extinguishing other people's claims. Is that what you're saying? No, I'm saying that if a thousand years from now, the Native Americans come and say, listen, we never agreed to give up this land. We want it back. We say, listen, you know, the world doesn't work that way. It might be very unjust what happened to you. And by the way, it wasn't. So why don't you flip that argument that way. You might, it might be very unjust what happened to you.

And by the way, it wasn't. So why don't you flip that argument and say, I am flipping it, but the Jews are back. And then other Arabs are like, well, we claimed that we had something here and we're looking at, I'm saying that the Arabs have been living there. They never had any, um, how many Arabs were living there? I don't know. Not a lot, not a lot. And the majority of them came when,

when Zionism came about because of economic migration into the land. We finally got the Middle East some work. So you're going to have how many of them? We are millions now, right? We are the indigenous people of the land of Israel. It's a historical right that we have based on our history, based on our archaeology, based on our claims. There was no other state there. Indigeneity give you a forever right to the end of time.

You know, it's a good question in theory, but in practice, we're back. Just like you said about America, we're here, we're back. And we push back against other claims. And the majority of Arabs that came in the last many years are there because of Zionism, because we actually created an economic matrix around there. We have rights to this land. We have superior rights. The world recognized those rights.

They recognize our indigeneity. The world does not recognize superior rights. Today, things have changed to this land. We have superior rights. The world recognized those rights. They recognize our indigeneity. The world has not recognized superior rights. Today, things have changed. Superior rights. But 100 years ago in 19... They never did. Really? There wouldn't have been a partition of...

There wouldn't have been a UN partition if they recognized your superior rights. The partition means that they recognize at least half of that. Half, yes. At least. And a little bit before that, before the UN,

there was a different body that recognized it. And at the end of the day, you can't wait around for the goyim, for the nations, to tell you exactly what your land is. It's our land. We're fighting for it. It has been recognized by international law. The great empire of the Great Britain at once knew that, helped us recreate our land in World War I, and we're back. We're back now, and nobody's going to deny that.

And there are Arabs there, and they deserve civil rights, but not necessarily national rights. I would give them residency. What are the differences between civil rights and national rights? National rights means it's an Arab state and civil rights means you get the right to your house. You get the right to your house, you can have your house. Well, let's live in your house. You would give them the right to vote for members of the Knesset? Not necessarily. I would say, I would say maybe either a broadened residency type program or maybe a limited voting, meaning to say you can vote for, you have five Knesset members out of 120. So you have representation, but you're not

going to steer the country towards an Arab jihadist state. It's still going to be a Jewish state. Now, that may sound a little funny to you, but here in the United States, you have plenty of examples like that, like Puerto Rico, 2 million people. They don't vote for president. Puerto Rico is a bad example. why is that a bad example because every year or so we we allow them a referendum to decide whether they want to form their own country no the the way it works is that puerto rico is an american territory right but but we've we've american more than once recognized oh if you want to go go let me ask you a question are the puerto ricans dangerous to the united states no but no first so therefore first acknowledge whether my argument is better or better.

I'm not sure you're right about that. And it doesn't even matter because the point is in this democracy, there is an alternative system for some peoples. And so we need an alternative system. Look at, by the way, the Qataris, the Saudis, and the UAE. They all are a minority people governing over a majority that doesn't vote. Nobody says boo about that. So Israel is a partial democracy.

It has certain democratic principles, but it's not a full democracy. It's a Jewish state. It's an ethnic national Jewish state for the Jewish people. It's a reservation. It's a protectorate. It's a little place for the Jewish people to survive, not to create an Arab state. Let me ask you a very philosophical question if you knew beyond the shadow of a doubt either divinely or whatever way that you felt that you were convinced that if israel were to with to leave the west bank

not another jew would ever die uh at an Arab hand, would you take that deal? Or would you say, no, it doesn't matter to me. The land is more important than even peace. No, I'll answer your question. But before I do, I want to tell you, you're talking like it's 1980, man. You're like, you're so way back. It's like, you're talking like every, wait a minute. You asked a question, I'll give you an answer.

You're talking like, you're like talking in a bubble that has blown up a long time ago. You say that ship has sailed. So long ago. And it's like, why would I even answer such a question? We already know. We already know what happens when you give away the land. So why would I go into your little bubble of imagination

in order to prove your point that Yishai Fleischer cares more about land than people? That's all BS. Because I'm trying to drill down on where you're coming from. Let's see the reality. What I said in 2005, when my wife and I went down to Gaza to protest against the Gaza giveaway, and we said that in a few years, they're going to dig tunnels, send out rockets, send out air balloons and dig tunnels and do an October 7th. We said this is what's going to happen if you give your land away to the jihad.

We were perfectly correct. Right. So you want me to ask you a question. By asking that question, by asking a question, you are proving a certain – you're giving away the fact that you're not a Middle Easterner. Because to a Middle Easterner's ears, the idea of giving away your land for anything sounds like, here's my wife. Just take her. Do whatever you want. Just don't hurt us.

No, no. Yes. It is a weakness. It is a weakness of even discussion. Okay. We are not to give away our land. We're to be strong. We're to be strong in our land, and people will respect you when you're strong.

But you just said you would answer it. The answer is that it's immaterial. That question is immaterial because it's not true. That formulation is just incorrect. And what's right, mine is mine. When you hold on to what's yours and holding on to our land, we'll save lives. Giving away our land, we'll kill. Because, you know, therefore, your theoretical, the formula that you threw out as a theory,

it could never happen. It's anti-Middle Eastern. There's two kind of broad camps here, and I was trying to put you in one or the other. One camp is, at this point, I guess is the third one, but they're very naive, which is I lament that the two-state solution is dead because who could imagine that wouldn't be a disaster or that it could ever happen? And another side is, which I think is your side, is isn't it terrific the two-state solution is dead?

No, no, no, that's not my side. Well, that's what I'm asking. No, my side is we told you that it could never work. Stop being so gosh darn naive. Okay. You can't give away your land to the jihad. Every person on the airplane says to me, can you just explain to me why, why you guys try to give away your land to your enemies?

It's like stupidity based on high Ashkenazi Jewish IQ. It's like, you're so smart. You think that maybe if you give away your land, you're going to get peace. It's just anti-Middle Eastern. It's just plain. worked in with egypt egypt i know but egypt is a party to october 7th it is the thing that sent all that weaponry through the tunnels through the rafa crossing it is an enemy of israel today or smugglers within egypt no not only that when when it was time now for all these refugees that should have gone out of Gaza immediately into the Arab state next door, which has a freaking wall. Yeah, but Egypt.

They blocked it. They put five different walls because they are part of the enemy. Egypt has its own. Number one bestselling book in Egypt is Mein Kampf. Okay. I doubt that's true. It's a fact. Look it up.

Egypt. It's not Harry Potter? It's not the quran whatever but the bottom i said book by the way it's nice it's nice to have a little comedy here at the comedy center egypt egypt has its own issues with hamas and the muslim brotherhood and there's corruption i i get it but we the the most did receive uh the the ten commandments at mount sinai which is somewhere in the Sinai Peninsula. Have you been there?

It's a beautiful place. I haven't been there. I've driven through there, but I never stayed there. On the way to Egypt. And Egypt, Israel did give back that land. And there has been a peace and it has held all these years, right? Okay. So from a person like me, from our perspective, that was the biggest mistake Israel ever did.

Israel should have been bigger. I believe in a big, bold, badass Jewish state that is strong and is respected in the region because of its size, because of its economic power, and because of its spiritual power. I think that Israel should have never given away the Sinai. It went from a big, nice Jewish state, meaty. It was still small, even with the Sinai. That's right. But it was meatier. You know, the Sinai. That's right, but it was meatier. You know, the Sinai has controls of two sea lanes. It has gas and oil.

It has places to land airplanes. It's a big, gazunta place, okay? And I like a nice Jewish state. Like, I like a nice state, okay? Big and chewy and strong, okay? And instead what happened, we shrank and we became a really moral, small, but good state. Can you please like us?

Can you like us? Look, we're giving away land for peace. And thrived. We have suffered. We have thrived because of other reasons. Thank Hashem. Thank God. Okay.

We have thrived because we've thrived, but not because we gave away our land. That was not a good move. Had we been bigger. And who, by the way, did we give away land to? A real anti-Semite,my carter a real hater proof in the pudding is the minute he finished the the the sinai courts he went on to promote hamas called israel an apartheid state etc etc he's a real hater well he wasn't until he spent two weeks with bagan and pam david and he if you if you read the transcripts of of camp david you see how incredibly forceful he was to shrink Israel and how he had a religious problem with Israel.

He had issues with Israel and he was a hater. You can make allowances for religious problems with people, right? Absolutely. Yeah. Fair enough. So, but okay. Not like we come from the Soviet Union. It's not like secularism was a great panacea itself.

So both religion and secularism have their... So if Israel is going to keep this land, do you imagine in 50 years, 100 years, 1,000 years, an end to nonstop terrorism within the borders of Israel? And then, and let me just add to that, and as, unless you guys can, your bunnies can keep up with their bunnies, it's likely that the Arab population begins to outstrip the Jewish population. And then you have this very ugly looking scenario of a country which could be 75% Arab and 25% Jewish, where the 75% don't have political rights.

None of this seems tenable to me. I understand. Does it seem tenable to you, or is Hashem going to provide? If you've noticed in my argumentation, so far it's been pretty rational and legal. I don't mean to be philipid. I'm actually – if we were listening to – people say from your mouth to God's ears, I was telling them from his mouth to our ears. You know, if we would listen a little bit more and act the way we're supposed to act in our region, we'd be in a lot better shape. Your questions are correct and problematic. No, no doubt about it. OK, first thing is. Just just to just to rule out the solution of cutting away parts of the land, yes, we have a population in our land.

But that population is dispersed also in mainland Israel, regular Israel, and other places. We had only in 22, we had a big conflagration of the Israeli Arabs in Ramle, in Lod, in Jaffa, in Akko, in other places that are in Be'er Sheva, in Arad, and a lot of places that have nothing to do with Judea and Samaria, exactly. Interesting that it didn't spread after October 7th. It is interesting. It is interesting. We have to be tough with the jihad. And if you listen to Arab commentators like Amjad Taha and other people from the UAE, they're saying all the time, you guys are weak on the jihad.

We have a no jihad policy around here. You've got to come down hard on this thing. You got to bring the kibosh down on this. Don't let it exist in your land. That's the most important thing. Don't let it be in the schools. Don't let it be in the mosques. Don't let it be on social media. Come down hard on this thing. And if you don't, they're going to continue to rise up and teach their kids and brainwash their kids. Sadly, the state of Israel is way too – has too many allowances for this behavior, for this miscreant behavior. But even if the jihad, the flame of jihad were to be extinguished, which is probably likely at some point and let's say the the pendulum swung all the other completely no direction to kind of like a gandhi-ish peaceful palestinian opposition any opposition to the land of israel any opposition to the jewish state is jihadism it could be

peacelink it could be it could be secular it could be religious it doesn't matter it is somebody trying to take away our land and trying to no. That's not jihadism. Sure it is. Jihadism has to do with Islam. No, no, no. Jihadism can find itself in many different – I've dealt with many secular areas. You're defining all movements of self-determination as forms of jihad. No, no, no.

Because you remember Yasser Arafat always used to say, I jihadi, jihadi, jihadi. He was just a secular – he was a secular jihadist like there are secular Zionists. It comes from the same impulse. It just has, let's say, a more anemic flavor to it, but that's a mixed metaphor, a more anemic color. We'll allow it. But let's get back to your question, which is very important. What do you do with the Arabs? Okay. So we've learned in the Middle East that you have states like Qatar, like the UAE, like Saudi Arabia, that the minority rules a big majority. A minority? A minority of Qataris, actual Qataris live, there's only like 25% of them, you know, the white robe wearing Qataris and the majority are all

kinds of peoples that are workers and coming from different places. They don't have rights, but they have opportunities. But they're all Arabs. No, absolutely not. Today, if you go to Qatar, you'll see that Qatar is chock full of all kinds of workers and talented people. Is it citizens? They're not citizens at all. They don't get citizenship.

And so the citizens are about 25% of the population. Right, but they came there voluntarily knowing the rules. They didn't live there for hundreds of years. Again, this business about hundreds of years is – It matters. No, but it's inflated. They haven't – the majority of them have not lived there for hundreds of years. And again, they never had an Arab state there.

These things are very important. They were farmers on the land. That doesn't mean that they could live under different states. They didn't have so many rights under a Turkish empire. Now they're living in the Jewish state. Remember, by the way,

the Arabs have a humongous land mass to live in. Humongous. From North Africa all the way to the Persian Gulf, all the way to... T.E. Lawrence described it as a great trapezoid

from North Africa through Iraq to... It's humongous. They're blessed. I always tell them, Allah loves you. He's given you all this land. He's given you 400 million children and oil coming out of the ground. Allah loves you. But this piece of land, Allah gave to us. They respect that. They respect that. They respect a strong Jewish state. A strong Jewish state is a force that pushes back against jihadism, that creates welfare for this region. It's a source of blessing. No wonder many Arabs say to me,

just give me a blue identity card. Just give me residency, please. That's all I want. I know you don't want me to be a citizen. You're afraid that... They say this to me. They go, I know you're afraid that we'll turn into an Arab state. Fine.

Give us residency. Let us live in this land. Let us thrive. Just protect us from this PA and this other Hamas. Just give us a decent life here. That's all we want from you. I hear it in Hebron Arabs. They say that a lot. So a hundred years from now.

A hundred years from now, it's going to look like this. First thing is what is peace? What is peace in the mind of a right-wing Israeli so-called settler? Okay. What does peace look like? It's simple, actually. It's so simple. It's a strong Jewish state living in its land, surrounded by strong Arab states living on their land, working together for regional prosperity. And a Palestinian majority that doesn't have full... I would start working on what we're talking about for a long time, and I wrote about it in the New York Times, which is a story unto itself,

but we have to help voluntary immigration of Arabs to Arab countries, except for those Arabs who want to live amongst us and respect the fact that they live in a Jewish state. When you say voluntary immigration, you pay them to leave? Voluntary immigration can mean a lot of things. It means that if you don't like a Jewish state, then you shouldn't be living here. If you like a Jewish state, then I'll let us sell it.

Well, welcome. What other way would be voluntary? I mean, if you make it unpleasant for them to live there, it's not really voluntary. I'm not in the business of making it unpleasant. I'm in the business of actually being the governor of our land and giving decencies to people, subjects of our sovereignty in the land. That's the business I'm in. I'm not afraid of having Arabs in my land. I'm not afraid of it.

But they have to understand clearly this small piece of land is the Jewish people's land. You could live here and have great roads and great health care and great upward mobility, but you're not going to take this over and create a Palestine on our land. If you say that word, that means that you're an enemy of the Jewish state and we're going to have to fight you and we're going to have to push you out because we're back and this is what we're doing here and we're not going to take no for an answer and it's and and our war will bring peace okay and if we succumb to them then it's going to be more jihad and more jihad and more kids brainwashed and more kids dying and they'll never give up you could be living in your tel aviv ghetto that's going to be this big and they'll still fight you to destroy you that's just the way it is look i i understand there's a possibility that your um prognostications may converge on my prognostications but for completely different reasons but yes um

what what's your i may have missed it what's your prognostic? Meaning that I don't see any solution to this either. And I don't see the Gazans or Hamas ever being ready to live in peace with Israel. Correct. Even in their own state. Well, that's what happened, right? Let's remember what happened in 2005. Israel walked away from this chunk of land that people like myself were like, don't do it. It's really, really dumb.

If you do that, they're going to make a jihad state. That's what happened. But if it is going to be, you know, ages of hundreds of years of violence, nothing's forever, hopefully, but hundreds of years of violence, I would much prefer, I think it's essential,

that it be state to state rather than a small minority ruling over a majority people. Why? Why is that? Why is that, Noam? You know, you were actually saying things that I hear in Israel a lot. Listen to the listeners. No, you talk about it. You are ready, because I've spoken to other

people, I think. You're ready for Israel to go it alone. It'd be nice if America supports Israel, but you know, if we have to be- I think quite the opposite. I think if we behave properly, we'd have a lot more support with us. There's a lot more people that want to see a strong Jewish state and would respect- But you're going to bring about this apartheid charge, which I reject right now, but it's going to be- you're going to bring it to reality. You're like a 1980 man. Really, I'm telling you. We're going to talk about Pat Benatar next.

I like the 80s. It's cool. You know what I mean? And I like Pat Benatar. But really, it's like you're talking like a previous thing. Like Trump goes to the Arab countries in the region. Nobody even for a second gives a damn about apartheid, not apartheid. Arabs have no rights in their whole region.

And they have the demographic trends in America and throughout the world. They're going to care. Listen to me. People respect a strong state. People respect strong countries. Talk about 1980. 1980, America was like 85% European. 20 years from now, or 30 years from now,

America's going to be majority non-European. Okay. They're going to have a different view of these things than America in the 80s. Yeah, yeah. And it's not going to be sympathetic to the Israelis. Oh, you think that they're going to go back to liberal American values and be like,

well, if you should have majorities and minorities. No, no, no, no. It's going to be much more primitive than that. Exactly. Yeah, but it's going to be real. Exactly. Exactly. They're not going to care about these things that you're talking about, apartheid. What they're going to care about is who is going to be a strong state that knows how to handle the things and knows how to govern and be a sovereign and give decencies and opportunities.

I promise you that even if Arabs don't have, look at the Druze, look at other people. You think that they have a decent life in Israel because they're voting? No, they have a decent life because they respect the Jewish state and the Jewish state wants to provide for them. We want, look at me, I'm a right-wing guy. Okay. I want to make sure that the Arabs living amongst us live a decent life. Of course they have to be non-jihadist, not anti-Israel. But the Druze, just for people that don't know because i'm not sure everybody knows what the druze community is they're a arab speaking community that has that that um has decided to live in israel uh be in the army and basically participate in the jewish state and i think they have full voting rights as well. That's true, but that's not the big deal.

All the Arabs have full voting rights. No, the ones in Israel. And by the way, they vote for jihadist anti-Israel parties. Like we have literally Israel haters that they vote for that are in our Knesset. These people should be arrested and certainly not serve as Knesset members and get Israeli pensions. Okay. We have a big problem. We've gone too far with our democracy. It's too liberal. It's too progressive. We've given too many rights to our own haters inside our country. I mean, we have books that they study in Eastern Jerusalem that is filled with kill the Jews messaging. I turn on the Palestinian Authority TV, which I have in my house.

Do you speak Arabic? You don't need to. I speak enough, but you don't need to. You know, you see the tone. The tone. It's not just the tone. You see the images. You see them you see the tone, the tone. It's not just the tone. You see the images. You see them burning, throwing rocks, burning Israel.

They're calling for a jihad against Israel. For God's sakes. It's so simple. You have to control minorities that live in your land. You got to make sure that they don't rise up against you. It's your land. Protected people will respect you. Succumb to it.

And people, you're just adding to the appetite of the jihad. It's so damn simple we said it uh in in 2005 we said don't give away this land the jihad will take it over there's not going to be any peace and look what happened did you did you advocate at that time um uh using violence against those who tried to um remove the jews from from the Gaza Strip at that time? I mean, would you? No, we did not. And would you? We did classic democratic protests. We were well within the rights of a democratic society.

We were absolutely not calling for violence against our own army. And the fact is we had to succumb to them and to that horrible mistake. And there's been three mistakes in a row, the Sinai giveaway, the, the Oslo accords, the Judean Samaria giveaway, and then, and then the, the Gaza giveaway and all this damn shrinking. And we've become a weak state. And let me ask you a question, Dan. Okay. Let me ask you a question. When do you think the world liked Israel better? The day after the six day war, when we kicked ass and we were like big and it looked like God came back into the world? Or after the Oslo Accords when we started shrinking and shrinking

and shrinking and shrinking and letting the jihad come closer to our throat, closer to it? What do you think people like this? Right now, does the world like us? We're crap in the world because of our weakness. Antisemitism is a product of weakness, of Jewish weakness. That's where it comes from. When the Jews are strong, people are like, well, okay, okay, okay. You guys are strong. You guys are strong. None of this seems like logical arguments to me. It's psychological, sociological, and political arguments.

You live in a little Talmudic. I live in my little 1980s enclave. You're more Talmudic than any religious Jew. You think that it's all about making these lines, these decisions. If we come into this kind of thing. No, it doesn't work that way. It doesn't work that way. You have to be strong.

People will respect you. That's the rules of the Middle East. Rule your land, your small land. Give fairness and decencies to people who want to live with you. People who hate you, they're out. All right. Well, so far, what you haven't disabused me of is that you have a recipe for never-ending violence. Your recipes have worked real well.

Well, for my people. I mean, you are a – I understand you're a student or a disciple of the land giveaway business, right? No. The two-state. You lament the lack of a two-state. You think that giving away land has worked out. I'm asking you. You have a good feeling about it?

It's working well? Good for you? No, I think the two-state solution is dead for now anyway. But I think that the settler violence— There is no settler violence. It is an absolute blood-libel bullcrap, okay? Okay, well, fair enough. So when I read a—

If it happens, it's a minority of minorities. When I read a Horat story about— why don't you read dear sturmur it's a little bit more uh well up up the alley actually i understand why you say that about harrods but they don't make things up and no and and and when the story is wrong i see i see i see it debunked in the other papers. But there are enough incidents. It was some back and forth. Now, I don't know how the fight starts. I don't know if they're covering just one side where somebody gets some Arab people get beaten up and urinated on and stuff like this.

And the state, as reported, that's what I have here. It's not true. It kind of doesn't really enforce the law. No, I'm sure it doesn't handle it the way they would handle it if it was a Jewish person. We are victims of a huge jihad against us. Okay? Yes, Jewish people sometimes fight back.

It's true. There is violence from time to time, but it's not this phenomenon. It's not this phenomenon. That's not the issue. It's not the issue of our time. We are not the abusers. We are the victims. We have to know that and the decision to um live and to aggravate and

and to provoke it with your presence in these communities is not part of that story that was that was a classic blaming the victim we're provoking them by by living we also provoke them when we left gaza right we provoke them all the time. Let me tell you something. We provoke them when we exist as a Jewish state in the Middle East. That provokes them. This is what's provocative. You told me this is not provocative. No, no, no. If you don't understand that, then you don't understand anything about Islam or the Arab

people. If you don't understand that it is provoking them when we have a Jewish, a shiny Jewish state that has returned after 2,000 years, after they have a religion which says that they have superseded the Jewish people, that we're supposed to be a subdued second class people. And then suddenly we're back in our land in our Jerusalem. And we have, you know, our thing going on in a shiny country in this region. If you don't understand that that bothers them, it'll bother them until you get rid of the very last Jew as a sovereign Jewish state. If you don't understand that, then you don't understand the Middle East. You want to apologize for the jihad?

You want to make it out to be because you're living in here, but if you only would leave here, then they'll be happy? When we were not in Judea and Samaria, they fought against us. 1929, before there was a Jewish state, they murdered 67 Jews in Hebron. Come on. Come on. Don't be—snap out of the old Hasbara lines and realize the reality. Well, there's a difference between citing the examples where they're in the wrong, where they had no. I'm here to defend actual beef. I'm not here to prosecute.

When Jordan attacked in 1967, Jordan attacked in 1967. That's that's on them. And Israel's, in my opinion, 100% in the right in that story. When settlers start moving into Arab neighborhoods and saying out loud, we intend to take this over. This is our land. You can stay here, but you don't have rights. We purchase land. We purchase land, the majority of-

Not in the occupied territories. Oh, certainly we do in the occupied territories. We certainly buy it in the occupied territories we certainly buy it all the time we buy out huge tranks of tracts of land we buy houses in hebron for a million dollars we buy a house from arabs and of course they're under the death threat to be to be murdered by the pa for selling land to jews listen what's what i don't even know that's interesting what are the legal rules about in the pa the palestinian authority sees as a criminal act selling land to jews Judea and Samaria.

But what are the international laws about it? Occupation and buying land and going to live there if the people who the world sees as owners of the land sell the land? That's an interesting thing. I never really thought that through. Why are you looking at me like this? This is a legitimate question. No, these are not legitimate questions. Somebody's got to deal with these questions.

No, no, no. These are not legitimate questions. You might think the answer is easy. The PA murders people for selling land. Do you understand what you're asking me? You're just Talmudicizing everything. But what about this? If I do this, then I do this.

How about this? Of all people using Talmudicizing as an epithet? Yeah, because you've got to know when to snap out of it and be the sovereign. There are people being murdered for selling land to Jews. Do you understand what you're talking about? You want to clean it up through international law. They're murdering people for selling land to Jews in cities that we've lived in for thousands of years, like Hebron. For God's sakes, they're jihadists.

They're thuggish jihadists. Don't you understand that they say why is it that arabs come to me all the time and say to me why do you guys allow these people to suppress us like this i do understand that they're thuggish jihadists and i do not see the connection between that and the jewish right to take over this land i don't see that connection a a we have we have i think i narrowed it down to five loci of rights in the land of Israel, including Judea and Samaria. We are the indigenous people of this land as recognized by international law before the newfangled international law came

around. But when international law was, was the controlling doctrines of international law, including the San Remo Accords, all those things, we are the indigenous people of this land. That's number one. We have also fought for the land defensively, meaning to say Jordan attacked us. And under principles of international law, when you're attacked in a war and you win land in under a defensive war, you get to keep it. Is that a principle of international law? It certainly is. And so that's number two. Number three is we've bought huge tracts of international, of law, of land. We've bought them from the apps we've got purchase rights we've got indigenous rights we've got war rights uh and what was that we

certainly have if you believe in it we have also uh uh historical spiritual rights but you don't have to believe that because there's other principles but buying the land would not translate into a right to not uh to take away civil rights? I never, I've said to you and I've maintained it. Voting rights and things like that. Voting rights is a national right, not a civil right. A civil right is letting you live your life. Okay, national rights. I was a resident in America for many years

before I became a naturalized citizen, but not in every country. Most countries in the world, you cannot become a naturalized citizen. You cannot, and certainly not in the Arab countries. I think of this civil rights because when black people didn't have the right to vote, the civil rights movement gave them the right to vote. That's why I say civil rights.

The United States and Israel are different kinds of countries. I actually truly respect the United States. It's a beautiful thing. When I go to Washington Square Park and see all the different types of races and peoples, ethnicities hanging out together and having equal rights. There's a beauty to it. There's a beauty to it, and this is a lucky country. But the state of Israel is an ethnic national state.

It's like many, many, many ethnic national states that exist around the world. If it's Poland or Ireland or a million other countries that are ethnic national, and certainly the Arab countries, it's an ethnic national state. It's a protector. We've got to wrap it up. Go ahead. I want to find out about Gaza. Well, also, I mean, I know.

So we're talking about when in 2005, when Gaza, when all the Jews were cleared out of Gaza and you didn't. You didn't. We protested against. Protested peacefully. What would happen? I know you don't love hypotheticals necessarily, but how far are you prepared to go if Israel decided now we're going to clear out where you live in Judea and Samaria? Is that Cyndi Lauper I'm hearing? I'm hearing like this like 80s stuff again. Well, I'm saying- The Jewish state is not about to clear out

Judea and Samaria because of the horrifically failed experiment of Gaza, okay? The majority of Israelis are not there anymore. They know that Palestinianism land giveaway is a mistake, which will bring death onto the rest of Israel. So therefore, I don't have to worry about that hypothetical. It's not happening. Moreover, just to answer your question, I've already proven the hypothetical in how we dealt with Gaza. But now it's time for me- Meaning that you left. We left. We had to accept what our state wanted to do. We did accept it. We are law-abiding lovers of Israel. We are Zionists. We love our country. We serve in its army. We pay its taxes. We love our country. And if our country decides against us to its detriment, that's its problem. So if you were the prime minister of Israel now,

what would your goal in Gaza be? First thing is I would invite you guys on a tour, show you the land. You know, one of the things about this whole discussion is that it's very, very, it's academic in a sense. Like I feel like I've sensed that you haven't really seen it, seen the land for yourself, not the Arabs, not the Jews. Excuse me, that is categorically. I'm talking about these two gentlemen. Or both of them as well. No, I don't know.

I don't think they know it well. I have not been to Hebron. Right. And I also sense that our discussion. I kind of like the music. It misses, you know what it misses the life force the beauty of the land you know I live and work with Arabs every Arabs don't have a don't don't have a this kind of feel about their land as well in their music that's my

point too you don't know what the Arabs think and I live with Arabs every day I speak with them every day I see them I see that how they you know what they say to me all the time be strong against the jihad give us just decencies and opportunities all the time, be strong against the jihad. Give us just decencies and opportunities. That's what we really want. And the jihad is get out. They talk to me about that every single day. It's like, I live with these people.

Can I just mention? They are my mechanics and they work in my wife's shops and stores that is filled with them. It's part of our life. Can we just mention that many people who would say exactly what you just said were slaughtered after they went back to hamas and drew maps of the the apartments and the camps and and and provided all the intelligence that the hamas needed to come in and slaughter the people who thought they were friends with the people were telling them be strong and that's that's we got

to be strong against the jihad it's exactly right right i Right. I'm saying, we're telling you these things. They may not actually mean it. Therefore you have to root them out. Therefore you have to root them out. So would you, would you, uh, but I just, how, how is this, we're going to handle this Gaza thing? Are they going to kick out, kick out all the Arabs? What's, what's your plan?

I'll answer you. I'll answer you fully just in one moment. Okay. And I just want to say to you like this, when I'm sitting here, which is so fun to be here and you guys are very smart and this is a beautiful place and you have a beautiful business here. And I wish I could do standup myself here sometime. And really, and I, and I have a passion for standup actually ask my kids. I love watching standup. And I, and I even for my birthday party a few years ago, I did a whole, I did my routine. I have a whole routine and it's really, it's really fun to be

here. But when we're talking, and this is a beautiful place, this downtown Manhattan, it's great. And when, when I hear you talk about all this stuff, there's something that I wish I could communicate, which is the beautiful life, which is the effervescent life of it all. The children's schools, the babies being born, the opportunities and the decencies and the rolling hills of the Bible and the Arabs that are decent, all that together. There's like a beautiful mosaic of life that doesn't come through in these discussions. Can you play the Gone with the Wind music, please?

Yeah, that's exactly right. No, but I'm saying, listen, don't get me wrong. I am, in some ways, you know, I am, I can't say I'm sympathetic to you. In some ways, I understand that what you're saying is sincere on your part, but what's glaring to me... Nobody's doubting that. I am what I am. Right, I understand it. But what's... I allude to God with the wind because I can imagine

anybody who's skeptical saying, yeah, that's exactly what the white southerners would say. I'm not comparing... But we are the people of the land. We have a headroom. We have a dig right now that I helped initiate. We have a dig right now. We helped initiate. We have a dig right now. We have dug one foot, one measly foot, and we have found coins from Senkoum Temple,

from the Maccabean Yanai, the King Yanai. We dug down this much. And we don't drop our coins easily, by the way. Our peoplehood is from this land. Don't give me the gone with the wind, like white colonialists. We're not white colonialists. We are resettlers. We are the returnees.

We are the children of this land. It's part of our DNA. You're describing the world through your own eyes. What do you want me to do? And what I don't hear is you wondering what it's like on the other side of that line. My God. Like, do you see? Wait a minute.

You promised to tell me what to do about Gaza. Wait a minute. What do you do about Gaza? The Arab world is huge and rich and massive. What are you making them out to be? Like some kind of paupers? The Arabs don't want to take in the Palestinians even if they wanted to go. Because they want to make war against Israel.

They use them as pawns. Anyway, what to do with Gaza is quite simple. And that's the problem with the intellectual class is that they refuse to to keep things simple but it's really very simple day one of the war should have been blown a hole a hole should have been blown between sinai egyptian had controlled sinai and gaza they have an arab neighbor all non-combatants even if they're jihadists should have been urged to move out into the sinai with tents provided by international war between israel and egypt okay so i'm asking you and i'm blow a hole how many ukrainian refugees left ukraine in the

russia ukraine war millions how many refugees left syria in the sy civil war. Many millions, many of them are still displaced right now in Southern Turkey. You have a flipping war. Right. This help the people because there are combatants. But Egypt doesn't want to let them in. So threaten them and, and, and,

and blow a hole in that thing and show some, some guts around here. Okay. Okay. But it could have led to war between Egypt and Israel. Bring it on. Okay. Or do you want to kill all you want to kill all these palestinians and then be allowed to

record about what your position is my position is i'm almost not even challenging it just i'm just trying to establish it i said it very clearly blow a hole in the thing if not if if you bring it on okay now i got that if not bring some boats send them to cyprus send them to spain send them to southern france spain is happy to take that's right send them to ireland they're their beloved friends in ireland and then could they come back after the war wait a minute wait a minute because the syrians get to go wait a minute yeah yeah yeah yeah there's millions of them in tents right now but they have the right i'll tell them i'll tell them that noam says that they have the right to come back okay no problem anyway the bottom line is that first thing i would do is i would i would i would ensure that non-combatants

leave the scene that's number one leave the scene on boats-combatants leave the scene. That's number one. Leave the scene on boats. Leave the scene walking. Leave the scene to Syria. Leave the scene to Jordan. We'll make a passageway to Jordan. We'll help you survive this war. All people that stay there in Gaza are therefore deemed combatants,

and we will now fight a good old clean war, make sure that no innocent civilians are hurt. They're out, just like in all the other conflicts around the world. It's amazing that the world has not even given, everybody talks about this genocide. So help them out. Let them do what they did in Syria and in Ukraine. Help them. No, nobody wants to do that because they want to use them as pawns. They want to use them. The world wants to use them as human shields so that Israel doesn't do what it's supposed to do. Now, you take care of these refugees, you give them a life, then you destroy the Hamas, then you take sovereign control over

the land, then you let in people who want to live in the Jewish state as residents. So you annex Gaza? Of course. Of course? Not annex, full up. Of course. It's a tiny, it's a sandbox. It's a tiny piece of land. It's 400 square kilometers. It's a joke. It's a town. Is Gaza-

It's a township in America. It's 400 square kilometers. It's a joke. It's a town. Is Gaza- It's a township in America. It's nothing. Is Gaza considered- I think where I'm from is bigger than Gaza. Is Gaza considered religiously- It's historically. You use the word religiously- Historically. Historically. In the same way as Judea and Samaria?

Absolutely. We had times that we controlled it. There were times where Philistines and other entities controlled it, but certainly there were many times in Jewish history that Israel controlled. Now, that's historically. What about religiously? Religiously, it's part of Israel. That's all there is to it. It doesn't have to be confusing. It's simple.

And by the way, look at the map. Just look at the map. If you look at the map, here's the coastline. Suddenly, there's like a missing chunk. Of course, it's our land. We used to swim there. It used to be a vacation place for us, Gaza. Gaza used to be a beautiful word, like Gaza beaches.

Okay? And by the way, Trump, I have a suspicion not everybody at this table likes him. I understand that. And I myself have some issues right now with him. But the bottom line is at least he has a good – nobody can deny that he has a good real estate sense. He knows that that chunk of land could be a nice place. It could be a riviera. That's the way it's supposed to be. That's what it really is. It's essence. But in any case,

then bring back people who want to live with us under our dominion, our sovereignty, our governance in peace and respect the Jewish state. It's very simple. Same thing with Judea and Samaria. Annex it, make it part of our land, make our land whole it's very small chunk of land it's smaller than new jersey assert sovereignty over it give decent people and decent life and opportunity as residents but in a jewish state they have a strong jewish state with strong arab states around us that's called the abraham accords that's a beautiful thing so you say you know you you constantly redirect me to historic arguments, historical arguments. Because the Middle East is a historical place.

Yeah. And this is actually with respect what I'm going to say. I don't believe you. I think it's religious. I don't deny. I'm a rabbi. I don't deny that I have a religious element, but I can frame that in legal or religious or historical arguments because they all converge. Right. So you're trying to make the kind of secular arguments in a way that I don't find convincing. And what do you find convincing? Giving away the land to the jihad?

No. That's why I said the realities can converge. What I do find convincing is the practical reality that right now, at least, jihad is at an all-time high and concessions are suicidal. I believe that. I'm feeling very good about that last statement. Yeah, Israel cannot take chances with concessions to an organization. And not just an organization, but if people through polling, through data we know, means them such grave harm. Kind of glib way to put it. So I get that. Are they to use that opportunistically for annexation,

to expand as the West Bank? No, you lose me there. Although I do think that occupation, reoccupation of Gaza, may be the only thing Israel can do. And I know that's supposed to be a terrible thing to say, but I don't say that because I want to see Israel deal with that mess. I say it because when I listen to the practical arguments, that seems the only one I can understand. The idea of an Arab peacekeeping force dealing, killing Gazan terrorists in an insurgency, I can't imagine the notion that Arab peacekeepers will start killing people on behalf of Israel. That would just be taking a match to the entire Middle East.

It's untenable. I don't know what they can do. They're not going to leave. They're not going to throw them out. I don't know. It's very sad times, right? It's very sad times. What's sad's very sad times, but I just... What's sad for me to hear is that you think it's sad times.

We have challenging times, but we are living in the best time of Jewish history in 2,000 years. No, we were October 6, 2023. Where we diverge is a philosophical, or I would call it more posture. My posture is of a sovereign my posture is not of uh i don't take this don't don't don't take this you know in a hard way of of jews who have not yet accepted that they we are now a strong jewish country and i'll call that i i this is for the sake of your listeners i don't hurt anybody's feelings but i would call that, this is for the sake of your listeners, I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings, but I would call that ghetto Jews who just don't understand that being a sovereign means governing other peoples and that's okay. Every power, how many nations are there in the world, by the way? Sociologists say that there are 3,000 nations, 3,000 ethnicities. How many

countries are there? About 193, meaning that there are many countries that govern all kinds of nationalities within them. I say as a Middle Easterner, as a almost Arab, I say I have no problem governing Arabs. I got no problem with that. I got no. I'm not afraid of that. I'm not afraid to give them welfare. I'm not afraid to give them medicine. I'm not afraid of making sure that their schools are OK. I have no problem governing. I have no problem governing other peoples in my land. And a bigger Israel is safer for more people, more decencies, less jihad in the region. I have another question along these lines,

just like in this fantastical outcome here. And Noam, we are living in great times. You would allow- 70 years ago, we were in Auschwitz. You would allow, 80 years ago, you would allow Jewish law. Oh, 80 years since the liberation. Fair enough. You would allow Jewish law, like business have to be closed on the Sabbath, kosher, like what?

Not mandated. I think that we have a Jewish character of the state. I think that as little as possible to force religious laws as possible there are certain things that are part of the character of the jewish state like the shabbat and makes it that we're all in an evil even playing field like the army should be kosher so that everybody could everybody could eat there uh there are certain things but as but as little as possible private businesses have to shut down i know i i i believe that as much as possible you should it should be by choice and and people should yearn to to do that because

it's a beautiful thing the buses can run on shabbat if it's not state-run buses if it's private buses certainly private bus company yeah yeah i i don't i don't want to mandate religion i don't believe in that i don't think that's a successful model uh i want people to come to it i want people to love it and i think the state should also teach basic judaism and basic bible and love of these things i think it should teach it not to its majority our citizens first thing first thing they should also learn why we believe what we believe but but and they certainly should not be teaching the jihad in those schools. But this is, this is, this is why it's untenable. So you're going to have a minority population teaching the Torah to a bunch of Arabs. First thing, first thing, first thing is, who says they can't learn the Quran? In the same school system. You can learn the Quran, but, but

as long as it's not the jihadist interpretation of it. Listen, the majority, you've asked me only one question that I've a little bit evaded, and that is the issue of a huge amount of Arabs in our land. I don't believe that's a good idea. I think you're right. I think we should go for voluntary immigration. I think we should help people leave to go to their countries. And I think that the people that get to stay are the lucky ones that want to live amongst the Jewish people. I don't think that we should walk away from them. I don't think we should succumb to them and surrender from them. I think we should hold on, hold on strong. If you're an Arab minority that wants to live, then you should get residency and you should live in our land. But I agree with you that we shouldn't have them now taking over the whole tiny protectorate, right?

Just like we don't want white Americans to start living in the reservations because they want a special place for them. So the same thing, we have to protect our small ethnic national Jewish state. All right, sir. Well, I hope you got a fair hearing here. Well, you got to remember that this hearing that we're having here is an intellectual conversation, but I go back home and actually live it. I carry guns. I have children.

I have a wife. I send them to schools. I drive on the roads. I shop with Arabs. This is not academics, okay? For me, this is the life, and I love it. I'm passionate about it. I think we're living in an amazing time with challenges, and I think that the operative word is responsibility.

We have to take responsibility for the land. We have to take responsibility to govern it properly. We cannot allow criminality to take over the land. We have to love it. This is a great moment. If we would leave it the way you would leave it, it's just like, ah, exasperation. No, no, sir. We're living in a great moment in time. And now we have to take steps to strengthen the Jewish state. It's up to us. We're the, we're the generation that's got to be responsible right now. We can't just like take it for granted. We've been waiting a long time for this thing. By the way, in your heart of hearts, how do you struggle with the, the, the, the, uh, knowledge that so many, uh, whatever the numbers, let's say it's inflated by 20%, 30%, whatever it is, that so many Palestinian children are dying here.

Does that weigh heavily on you? Do you say that's on them? Do you spend time thinking about that? I mean, I think it's a – let me spread the blame out evenly. No doubt Hamas wants to see children dead. No doubt about it. That's part of their strategy. No doubt the international community has done bubkis to help the refugees get out.

And no doubt that Israel is complicit in that they haven't done more to make sure these refugees – there would be refugees and would get out of the harm's way. So I am not – the numbers are inflated, no doubt and all that. But yeah, I think that Israel has done a very poor job at being more forceful and helping these refugees get out. I have a lot of criticism about the way that Israel's handling things. It's part of it, but the criticism is you're being too weak and too flippant and you're letting a lot, when you fight a weak war, actually more people end up people end up dying okay if you fought it properly a lot more people would be safe in the long run yeah other people have said that um it's probably true it's probably true i'm telling you we're living in great times and we're gonna have to overcome it there's a lot of mistakes that have

been made but right now it's a great time in jewish history uh with challenges uh and and i'm excited about the future. I'm excited about it. And I tell you that my children are excited about it. My neighbors are excited about it. I have a lot of Americans, former U.S. residents, still citizens living amongst in my town where I'm also, by the way, a councilman of a 14,000 people town. What about the ultra-Orthodox who don't want to serve in the army? You oppose them? I think that there could be a better system in place. It's very simple. Actually,

my system, my solution is that everybody has to do two years of national service of any kind. And I'm talking about boys, girls, Arabs, Jews, ultra Orthodox, secular. I don't care what, we equalize it. The problem with Israel, it's kind of a Jewy state and everybody's got a different deal. I don't like that. I wish everything was just equalized across the board. Everybody's got to serve. If you don't want to serve in the army, okay. But then you have to be a firefighter or a police officer or something, just national service for everybody, Arabs as well. Nobody has super citizenship. Okay. And if you don't do that, then you lose your right to vote or you lose your And if you don't do that, then you lose your right to vote or you lose your whatever. They don't have the right to vote.

No, the Israeli Arabs certainly do. But you don't want to, you don't want, I would not give them the right to vote. I would give them residency, but I would still demand of them. But even residency has got a lot of contradiction there. There is a contradiction, but it is well within the established norms of the Middle East. The contradiction for the listeners is that if you're saying it's all one piece of land, then why do some of the Arabs get the right to vote? I'm against that. I would give everybody the same thing.

You're going to take away the Arab-Israeli right. Well, I would grandfather, I would give residency to their children. I wouldn't take it away because that might be hurtful. But from child born, starting today, is from now on a citizen. This is crazy talk. I'm sorry. It's because you don't know comparative democracy. There's many countries that have...

Not everything is America. Not everything is America. We don't have one voting right in the whole Middle East, not to mention decent rights. Okay, we have one tiny country that protects us. Yeah, wouldn't it be great if Israel could imitate... We didn't come out of Auschwitz to give the Arabs the vote. We didn't come here to create an Arab country, for God's

sakes. We came here to create a Jewish state and we want to give decencies and opportunities to decent people. That's all there is. It's so simple. It's so simple. This is the thing. It's not simple. These problems may be intractable. As long as you don't put yourself in your own straitjacket of

Western white colonialist ideas and get into understanding that we're a Middle East country that has to operate better. The notion that Israel is going to disenfranchise its own Arab citizens or their children. Not totally disenfranchise. I say give them some kind. I said to you before, I gave you options. There are many countries in this world. Disenfranchise may take away the right to vote.

Yeah, I understand what you're saying. I'm saying not totally disenfranchise. Give them some kind of voice. But not to drive our country to become an Arab country, which is – listen, look what's happening in the world today. You have the jihad using liberal countries and the systems of liberalism to undermine them. That's what's happening all over the world. It's happening in America today. Today, and Jews are under threat here now.

There's been two terrorist incidents in the last few weeks. You're serious. I'll leave you with my theory of world history okay and i told this history i've told i said it on the podcast before but i've said this too i thought it was stupid and then i said it to some important thinkers and they looked kindly on it and my my my theory it's called the difficult child theory of world history and this is how i put You know, when you see a kid is very, very badly behaved, very badly behaved, and his parents are very liberal. And they let him get it. And they say, look at those parents. They let him get away with this. They never punish him. Of course,

their kid is acting out. And you see another kid is acting out, and his parents are really hard on him. They don't give him a second to breathe. And you say, look at this poor kid. His parents never fucking give him a break. They're on top of him all the time. Of course, he's acting out. But the reality is, neither is true. It's just this fucking kid is difficult. And this is where I have difficulty with what you're saying, because I think that we are dealing with the difficult child, which is the jihadists. And whether you say it's the liberal way we should treat them or the right wing way to treat them or somewhere in between, or the liberal things caused it or the right wing

things caused it or the reason about, no, I actually think none of that is causative. I think you're right. The problem is them. And, and and and and and just like the difficult child there really is no way to the family's going to be miserable no matter which tact they they take and um it's a nice theory i like it and it's fun uh the only the only thing is i would say is i wouldn't want you to to i wouldn't want to be exactly a sign onto that for one reason, which is the one thing that you're missing in, in the way you kind of described what I said is forget the jihad for a second. It's our land. It's our beloved land. It's our spouse. It's where we're from. It's where our history is from. It's where our God is. You want me to be more religious? I'll do it for you. Okay.

It's, it's where, it's where our peoplehood got prophecy it's where abraham and and sarah isaac rebecca jacob and land rage where jesus pre oh i'm sorry but one of our boys made it you know either attack is not going to work and i'm just trying to say that i don't want you to just i don't want this is not about negativity we're bad we're not like we're not like in hebron because we want to fight the jihad we're in hebron because the tomb of our forefathers and mothers are there we're there because we've been there for the last three and a half thousand years like we love this land we love it and we're going to love it and we're going to be victorious in the end because we are tenacious and sometimes being stiff-necked is a compliment i'm coming away from this conversation even more pessimistic than I was.

That was not the intent here. I know, I know. But your people, you people are growing in numbers. That's right. By the way, I didn't want to say this. I didn't want to pull rank, but we're the majority. And we're going to be the majority. We're going to out kid the other folks.

And our ideology is more solid. It makes more sense. It's more, it's more holistic. It's, it's more, it's, it's more sensical. It's more clear. It's more Middle Eastern. It's more organic. Like this, this pieces, uh, you know, a little bit of this and a little bit of that and cut out this and give them that and this and that and separate it out. It doesn't work. It's Sharia-ish. Whatever. I don't, I don't accept that. And I find that to that to be uh just ad hominem and useless i i think that at the end uh we have adjacent no i i don't mean to be ad hominem i'm saying that it's sharia in a sense what's sharia i gave you i i'm i'm i don't even want to answer it what sharia is that there's a there's a there's a there's a certain moral uh um structure that

you believe in yeah i believe it's our land. That is divine law and land and all of it. And that is what history is. It is divine and it is also accurate in other ways. You know, this may sound a little obtuse or weird, but if we analyze what's happening in this room right now, we can analyze it in many different ways. Molecularly, sound-wise, light-wise, sociologically-wise.

We can analyze it in a million different ways. Linguistic-wise, there's a million things, but they're all true. They're all true. Because there's just many ways of understanding reality. You're right. I'm a religious person. I believe, I love the Bible. I love the book of Genesis.

And I think we should all study it. And we should be part of it. You're right. You're right. And it touches me that Abraham bought a tract of land in Hebron. You're right. But the other things are not untrue. It's not that I'm hiding it.

I'm just arguing also in law and in war and in Middle Eastern psychology. And they all align, in my mind, for my policy position. Okay? You're right. Religious is an aspect of it, and it's true. But the other things are also true it is true that you dig down one foot and you find our history in this land it is true yeah but and it is also true that middle eastern wise to give away our land is to embolden the jihad those

are also truths okay but i want to come from a place of love but you also don't want to acknowledge that the counterfactual of not having made peace with egypt since the 77 or whenever it was may not have been all uh fantastic may not have been all peaceful may not have been rosy it's hard to know it's hard to know because we don't have a way to to prove it but uh you you you would prefer that israel be enemies with every arab country right now. Not quite the opposite. I think the Arabs would join in. Rather than have ever parted with a, what's the biblical acre? Not a cubit. A dunam.

A dunam. I don't know. That's just the way we say it in Israel. The Sinai was a mistake in my mind, but it's hard to prove the other way. It's hard to prove it. The fact is that we have a very cold peace with Egypt, and at the end of the day, they are the big suppliers of Gaza, and they have stopped them, the refugees, from coming in. So listen, it's a tough question. I can understand your position.

I've heard it many times. I think it was a mistake. I think a bigger Israel is a better thing for the Middle East. And I think it'll be better for the Arabs, a big Israel. Great snorkeling. Huh? Great snorkeling. Absolutely.

The blue hole. Sharm el-Sheikh. Sharm el-Sheikh. Okay. Good night, everybody. Thank you very much, sir. Thank you. Good night.

Thank you for having me. Hi. Well, that was fun. Yeah. Right? Very good. There you go.